Japan Society (1896). Dr. Florenz's excellent German version of the mythical part of this work may also be consulted with advantage. It has copious notes.
Kiujiki.—A third source of information respecting the mythical lore of Japan is the Kiujiki. A work with this name was compiled A.D. 620, i.e., one hundred years before the Nihongi, but the book now known by that title has been condemned as a forgery by native critics. Their arguments, however, are not quite convincing. The Kiujiki is in any case a very old book, and we may accept it provisionally as of equal authority with the Kojiki and Nihongi. It contains little which is not also to be found in these two works. Unlike them, the Kiujiki makes no attempt to be consistent. It is a mere jumble of mythical material, distinct and conflicting versions of the same narrative being often dovetailed into one another in the most clumsy fashion. It has not been translated.
Idzumo Fudoki.—This work, a topography of the province of Idzumo, was compiled about A.D. 733. It contains a few mythical passages.
The Kogoshiui was written in 807. It adds a very little to the information contained in the Kojiki and Nihongi.
Shôjiroku.—In this work, which is a sort of peerage of Japan (815), the descent of many of the noble families is traced from the deities of the Shinto Pantheon.
Yengishiki.—Our principal source of information for the ceremonial of Shinto is the Yengishiki, or 'Institutes of the Period Yengi' (901-923). It gives a minute description of the official Shinto ritual as then practised, together with twenty-seven of the principal prayers used in worship. These prayers, called norito, were now, so far as we know, for the first time reduced to writing, but many of them must be in substance several hundreds of years older. Some have been translated by Sir Ernest Satow for the Asiatic Society of Japan (1879-81), and the series is now being continued by Dr. Karl Florenz, whose translation of the
